


the holding

by zoicite



Series: hold on to you, hold on to me [2]
Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Series, Series 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:26:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoicite/pseuds/zoicite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom looked up at the house, at the dark windows and the boards, and he couldn’t help it, he smiled.  It had been several months and so far, it was going all right.  There were no vampires in Barry at all, except one, and he was safe.  He was theirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the holding

Tom paused, stood quiet in the woods. He listened and he waited.

There was someone else in the forest and Tom was pretty sure they weren’t human. He’d heard them moving a while back, caught the scent of their cologne on the breeze when he was by McNair’s grave. He didn’t pause to think; he started following immediately. 

Now Tom waited, tried to catch another whiff of the cologne. He listened for the snap of twigs, for the crunch of leaves beneath clumsy feet, for the sound of low-lying tree branches being brushed against and pushed aside.

He often wondered how much of him had changed with the wolf. He’d never really known anything else, so it was hard to say. He was human for a bit, sure, but that wasn’t real, so he couldn’t know how accurate it all was. 

Tom knew how it went the week before the change. Everything worked better: sight, smell, his hearing, but he thought that maybe he had better senses than most people the rest of the time too. That was how it seemed sometimes anyway, like now, catching the smell of that cologne when he was sitting there at McNair’s grave. But then maybe that was just from all the living in the woods and hunting; from feeling hunted. Maybe it had nothing to do with the wolf at all. Maybe this vampire (he assumed it was a vampire anyway. It was best to assume the worst) just wore a lot of really bad cologne.

Hal would probably know – about the werewolf thing, not about the vampire’s cologne. Hal didn’t wear too much cologne, but he did seem to know an awful lot about werewolves. It didn’t seem like much good came from Hal knowing that much, at least not much good for werewolves, but it was working out all right for Tom so far. Mostly.

Tom shifted, impatient. He wanted to get back to the house. Before coming out here, he’d had a long shift at the café. It was good; Tony needed the help, they could use the money, and anyway, the café was a good place for collecting information. Tom came out to the woods when his shift ended, just to clear his head a bit. He liked to walk around, make sure the woods were still safe for when he had to come out here to transform, and also, he liked to take a minute to sit with McNair. It was good for him, just sitting in the woods and thinking things through every once in a while. Sometimes he pretended McNair was there and Tom told him things, what was going on with Alex and with Hal, with Barry and Wales and vampires and the world. It felt good to be open about it, even if he wasn’t really talking to anyone at all.

There was a sound off to Tom’s left, the crack of a stick breaking beneath a boot. 

Tom turned and waited and after a moment a man stepped into Tom’s line of vision. A vampire, definitely. The vampire turned and caught sight of Tom right away.

The vampire stopped, stared, sniffed the air, and then started to approach. Good. It’d go quicker this way. Tom didn’t want to have to chase after him. 

“Tom McNair,” the vampire guessed once he was standing at a conversational distance.

“You heard of me,” Tom said with a nod. That was happening more often now. It wasn’t really that comforting, but it was what he’d wanted. It was the goal.

“It’s true then,” the vampire said. He smiled, ducked his head when he did, and it was kinda charming. Tom guessed that a smile like that must fool a lot of people. It wasn’t going to work on Tom.

“Yeah, it’s true,” Tom agreed.

“You think you can just stake your claim to Barry without a fight?” the vampire sneered. He didn’t look so pretty now.

“Nah, I expect a fight,” Tom said. He pulled his stakes from the pockets of his coat.

The vampire laughed. “That’s cute.”

“Yeah,” Tom agreed. “Guess you didn’t hear what happened to the others.”

The vampire shrugged. “I’ve heard. That’s why I’m here. They were young and stupid and following the orders of Hal Yorke.”

“Leave Hal out of this,” Tom said quickly. Probably too quickly. “He ain’t a part of it. Not anymore. And those vampires weren’t all young and stupid neither. Some of them were older than you, I reckon. Probably thought they were smarter too. I bet they were.”

“The great Lord Hal thinks he can kill his own kind and then simply hide out, protected by werewolves, does he now?” the vampire asked.

Alex told Tom that he should start lying. She told Tom that he should tell them that Hal was dead, that Tom had killed him. 

“String some of those teeth you’ve collected about your neck,” she suggested. “You could tell them that they’re Hal’s. Just start telling them he’s dead and we’ll be a werewolf and two ghosts.”

Alex suggested Tom should let one or two of them go so they could spread the word. Regus and Michaela would help get the news out. Regus fancied himself some sort of double agent now, wouldn’t mind helping Tom. 

Tom brushed Alex off, didn’t think it mattered because vampires who showed up in Barry never left, but maybe Alex and was right. Maybe if they thought Hal was dead they’d stop coming all together. Tom didn’t really think so, but it might be worth a shot. Maybe they didn’t really care about Barry or Tom at all; maybe this really was all about Hal. 

“What are you doing out here in the woods anyway?” Tom asked. Vampires didn’t usually spend a lot of time hanging out alone in forests.

“Looking for a werewolf,” the vampire said, and then the small talk was over and the vampire came at him, black eyes and fangs. 

**

The house on Coast View Road looked abandoned, deserted. There were plywood boards covering the windows on the ground floor, some of the windows upstairs too. 

No one thought much of it. People mostly kept to themselves these days. The neighbors probably heard the shouting from inside once in a while, but they must have heard that before too, before Hatch and before Hetty. They never said anything then and they sure weren’t speaking up now. 

Tom looked up at the house, at the dark windows and the boards and he couldn’t help it, he smiled. Overall, it was going all right, he thought. It had been like this several months now and so far, it was going all right. There were no vampires in Barry at all, except one, and he was safe. He was theirs. 

It wasn’t easy, not always. Hal still got mean sometimes. He lashed out at them, snapped and fought. Once he even tried to fight his way out, to escape the house. 

He was there waiting when Tom unlocked the cellar door. They fought until they were both bruised and breathing heavily, and eventually Tom managed to get behind Hal, get him pushed up against the wall of the cellar, Hal’s cheek pressed to the scratches in the wall left there months earlier by Tom’s nails. Tom expected Hal to fight back, to try to get Tom off of him, to twist and push, and Hal did, but not like Tom thought he would. Instead Hal pushed back against Tom’s groin and then Hal dropped his hands and started unfastening his trousers, let them drop to the floor at his feet. The cellar door was still standing ajar when Tom pushed into Hal, but Hal didn’t try to run again.

Sometimes Hal talked about world domination, talked about vampires taking over everything. He talked about joining them, returning and taking his rightful place, but Tom didn’t think he really meant any of it. Sometimes Hal threatened to kill them, to tear Tom limb from limb, to rip everything away from Alex until she had nothing left, no choice but to fade. He didn’t really mean that either. Hal had a chance to kill Tom. He had plenty of chances and he didn’t take them. In the end, he chose them. He handed himself over willingly. 

If you had to choose, anything in the world, what would it be?

Hal chose them, but he seemed to forget that sometimes and he accused them of holding him against his will. He pushed Tom up against the wall of the cellar and kissed him, just like he used to in that old warehouse, hard and a little mean.

A few weeks ago he bit Alex, or tried to bite Alex, anyway, because obviously Alex was a ghost and couldn’t actually be bitten. Hal must have forgotten that in the moment. His eyes went black and his mouth came down hard on her neck. Tom came downstairs right as it was happening, saw almost the whole thing. Hal’s mouth didn’t look like it was trying to rip or tear, just bite, but it didn’t matter. That didn’t make it better.

It didn’t hurt, not really, not with Alex already being dead and all, but Alex shouted anyway, panicked and pushed Hal away. She shoved him hard, knocked him to the floor, and then she rentaghosted right out of the cellar.

“You don’t try that again, mate,” Tom warned. “You wanna bite someone, I think it oughta be me.”

“Is that a threat?” Hal asked. He wasn’t smiling. His eyes weren’t black anymore, but Tom could tell by the set of his mouth and by the pronunciation of words that his fangs were still down. 

“Maybe it is,” Tom shrugged. 

Things got understandably tense after that, but it was a few weeks back now, and the tension had started to dissipate. Things were settling back down. Alex and Hal had made up sometime, probably while Tom was at work or asleep or roaming about in the woods, Tom wasn’t sure. He just saw that they seemed close again. He didn’t want to press or pry. He didn’t want to question it too much, because mostly things were different now. 

Despite how it might sound if you pushed all the bad together and thought about it all at once, mostly they were good. Mostly now when Hal tried to fight him, Tom pulled Hal closer, kissed him back and didn’t feel that guilty about it. He kissed him until he felt Hal’s shoulders relax against his, felt the fight slip out of him. Either that or Tom pushed back, fought back, shoved Hal back and – well – it was different than before. Most of the time they didn’t feel the need to fight at all. They sat together and they watched telly. They joked and they laughed. They slept together in the same room, the three of them, Tom’s face pressed against Hal’s chest as Alex ran her fingers in soothing patterns over Tom’s head. It was better. 

Tom looked around. He was alone on the street. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys and the tooth of the vampire he’d reduced to dust out in the trees. The vampire was fertilizer now, food for the forest. His dust would mix in with the dirt and the plants. Tom pushed the tooth back into his pocket as he started toward the front garden.

**

The first thing that he noticed upon entering the house was that it had been tidied up. Hal had been upstairs. That was good; it meant that Hal must be having a good day. He was probably in the cellar now, reading or doing his press ups or – maybe Alex was with him. Maybe they were down there, wrapped together on Hal’s narrow bed, kisses slow and lazy. They did that sometimes; Alex liked it. 

Maybe they heard the door, knew that Tom was home and they were down there waiting for him to join them. Maybe Alex had her fingers pressed to Hal’s head as she kissed him. Alex still loved that too, to relive that one night that they had together, the three of them as humans. Maybe they were back there together now, reliving the bit with Tom and – 

Tom locked the door quickly behind him, removed his coat and then moved down the hall. He went straight to the cellar door and then he stopped, surprised. Hal wasn’t down in the cellar as he’d assumed after all. No, Hal was standing in the kitchen doing the washing up at the sink, which in and of itself wasn’t really all that unusual. The problem was that Hal was alone. 

“Where’s Alex?” Tom asked, immediately suspicious.

“Tom,” Hal said in greeting. He was wearing his marigolds, had a soapy plate in his hand. “Her mobile rang. I think she – “ 

“You ain’t supposed to be up here alone,” Tom cut in. “She knows that. You know that too.”

Hal sighed. He set the plate down and gestured toward the sink. “I know, I wasn’t –“

“Alex?” Tom called. He moved toward the door and called for her again from the hall. He heard her shout something back, though he couldn’t understand what she said. She didn’t sound like anything was wrong.

“I’m – “ Hal started. He shut his eyes for a moment, as though he was trying to gather himself, and then he said, “Check the – Tom, just check the back door. Please.”

“What?” Tom asked. He turned back toward Hal. “Why?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s holding the doors shut. I’m held here just as I would be if she was in this room with me.”

Tom frowned, moved to the back door and tried the knob. He pulled and nothing happened. 

“The bolt,” Hal said.

Tom reached up, turned the bolt, unhooked the latch, and tried again. Nothing. He pulled at it hard, pulled with all his weight, and still nothing. It didn’t even shake. It was like pulling at stone. Hal was right.

“She’s strong,” Hal noted, watching Tom struggle. Tom released the door and stepped back away from it, his hands at his sides.

“Did you try it though?” Tom asked. “Did you know that because you tried it as soon as she went upstairs?”

Hal shook his head. “Actually, no,” he said. “I didn’t – it didn’t occur to me. Not today.”

Tom took this in. He looked Hal up and down. He looked at the set of Hal’s shoulders, the way his hands were held out, gloved fingers dripping water onto the floor. There was nothing about Hal today that suggested that he was struggling with his situation. He didn’t look like he’d been desperately pulling at the doors before Tom arrived home.

Finally Tom nodded. “All right,” he said. “Good.”

Hal’s smile seemed a little unsure, but he nodded too, and then went back to washing up, his back to Tom, his focus on the task at hand. Tom moved away from the door and came into the kitchen to stand against the counter, right behind Hal. He watched the movement of Hal’s shoulders beneath Hal’s shirt as he scrubbed at a spot on the plate. 

Once, in the warehouse before all this, Hal pushed up against Tom and when Tom kissed him back right away, no hesitation, Hal smiled.

“What?” Tom has asked. 

“Just like Pavlov’s dog,” Hal said. 

“Wolf,” Tom corrected, a reflex, and Hal had laughed, said he meant something else, meant how Tom had started getting aroused sometimes while he was fighting other vampires, could hardly wait for Hal to get his hands on Tom once the others were dead. Tom was pretty sure he didn’t like the comparison. He’d never wanted – he didn’t like the association of sex with violence and killing, never had, but Hal had been right then, and what he’d said then was still just as right now. 

All those months of fighting and kissing – foreplay, Hal said – and now the fight with the vampire in the woods had left Tom feeling charged up and ready for more. He watched the muscles move beneath Hal’s shirt and he couldn’t help but picture Hal there in the forest, the smirk on Hal’s face, the way he would slowly clap when the vampire that Tom fought was reduced to dust. 

If Hal had been there in the forest, Tom would have gone for Hal next, pushed him up against the nearest tree and – 

Hal set the plate aside and reached for a mug next.

That was different now too. Yeah, Tom reminded himself, he came back to the house itching and aroused, but it wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t always connected to violence, not like it was before. It was nice now too, slow and thorough, the three of them together, almost like it was that first time, just like Tom had wanted. 

Now though – Like Pavlov’s dog, Hal had said, and Hal would know, wouldn’t he? Hal had spent all that time training him.

Tom pushed himself away from the counter and took a step closer to Hal. Hal heard the movement or felt it, and he glanced back at Tom over his shoulder, an eyebrow raised, but only for a moment before he went back to washing the mug. Hal didn’t stop his chore when Tom reached out and pressed his hand over Hal’s right shoulder blade. He didn’t stop what he was doing until Tom followed that up by pressing his face to Hal’s back, his nose to the fabric of Hal’s shirt, right at the center below Hal’s neck.

Hal froze there, but he didn’t move to stop Tom. He didn’t pull away and there was nothing in his body language that suggested he wanted Tom to stop. 

Tom kissed his back again. He felt Hal reach across the sink to turn off the tap, felt the movement beneath his hands and beneath his lips. His fingers pressed in against Hal’s shoulder and he opened his mouth against Hal’s shirt, let his teeth scrape over the fabric, over Hal’s skin.

That did it. Hal was quick in removing his marigolds. He tossed them unceremoniously into the sink and then he turned in toward Tom. Tom didn’t hesitate; he was on Hal right away, pushing him back against the edge of the kitchen counter, pulling him in until their mouths met in a kiss.

He’d been thinking about this since he left the forest. The walk was too long and he ran part of the way, anxious to get back to the house, to get back to Hal and to Alex. 

He kissed Hal again. He’d kissed Hal a lot now – Alex too – and he’d really started to know the things that they liked. He didn’t think he was half-bad at it now. He kissed Hal’s mouth open and then moaned when he felt the slide of Hal’s tongue against his own. He pulled Hal closer, moved in until he felt Hal press back against him, Hal’s thigh pushing up against Tom’s erection. Tom grunted as Hal’s fingers pulled at Tom’s trousers and then Hal’s hands were on him, working at the button, pulling at the zipper. 

Hal got Tom’s trousers open and then he stopped, broke the kiss and turned his head away. Tom leaned in and kissed Hal’s neck instead, rubbed himself against Hal’s thigh.

“Perhaps we should move this into the other room,” Hal suggested. 

“Mm,” Tom said and kissed Hal’s neck again. He could picture the face Hal was probably making, his eyebrows high as he turned away from Tom, his mouth working. Sometimes Hal was exactly as he’d been before. Sometimes there was no difference at all. 

“Tom,” Hal said. “Did you hear me? I said – “

“Yeah,” Tom said. He pressed his forehead to Hal’s shoulder. “Yeah, I heard you. We should – yeah, we should get Alex down here and move into the other room. That’s a good idea, Hal.”

Tom stepped back away from Hal. Hal cleared his throat, ran a hand over his head, and then let it fall back to his side. Tom could see that Hal was hard too, could see that it wasn’t just him, that Hal was still into this too. This was all part of why Hal came back, wasn’t it? That’s what he claimed then anyway.

It’d gotten a little weird lately. Now sometimes Hal didn’t want them to touch him. Sometimes Hal wanted to get himself all worked up and then do nothing about it. It had something to do with control, with denying every day urges. It didn’t make much sense to Tom. Getting off seemed like a good way to keep your mind off other things as far as Tom was concerned. Vampires, though, they always mixed up sex and blood. Tom still didn’t really understand it. He probably never would.

“Think about it though, it’s like – it’s your very own sex slave,” Alex joked, shortly after Hal started in with it all. “Hal, locked down there in the cellar, just waiting to pleasure you without expecting anything in return. It’s a goddamn porn fantasy.”

Tom balked a little at that. “That ain’t how it is!”

Alex laughed, but Tom didn’t think the joke was that funny. Hal wasn’t any kind of slave. That wasn’t what this was about. And anyway, Tom never _made_ Hal do anything except stay in the house and stay off blood. 

Now, in the kitchen, Hal took a step away from the counter. He swallowed, opened his mouth as though to speak again, and then they were back on each other, pulling at clothes, mouths sucking, teeth scraping, kissing as though it’d been a long time since they’d done this, though it hadn’t been that long at all, just since yesterday morning, really.

And anyway, it hardly ever seemed like Tom was any more interested in this than Hal or Alex. He wasn’t the only one who was eager for it. They started it as often as he did, but you didn’t see him poking fun then. It didn’t matter. 

He knew how it was – it was weird sometimes. It got weird and a little intense, what with Hal being, well, how Hal was now, and if they needed to pull back, joke a bit and keep it light, Tom sort of understood that. No one seemed ready to go right back to where this all had started, not after everything that happened afterward. Maybe someday they’d get back there and it would be like that again, to a place where this felt normal and lasting and they didn’t feel ashamed to voice what it really was, where they didn’t feel like it was something they couldn’t say, something they shouldn’t. Until then, they had this. They had each other, and they just didn’t talk much about the rest. 

Tom could say it now. Tom could admit it: he loved them. He was in love with them. They were his family and his pack and his. Maybe it wasn’t normal, and it wasn’t always as nice or as easy as he’d hoped, but he loved them. They were his and he was going to hold on to them for as long as he could.

He didn’t say it though, not to Hal anyway. He didn’t even say it directly to Alex. He said it sometimes when he was alone in the woods with McNair, but other than that he kept it to himself for now, at least until they figured things out with Hal, figured out how he fit with them now, how they could make it all work.

For now it worked like this. Plywood boards covered the windows making the room feel a little like a cave, dark, but comfortable and safe too. Light pushed in in small streams around the edge of the wooden sheets and Hal kissed Tom as he guided them both into the room through the swinging double doors. Tom knocked into a chair as they passed the table, stumbled and righted it before rushing back to Hal’s mouth.

“Alex,” Hal gasped against Tom’s lips.

Tom pulled back just long enough to shout for her.

“Alex! Alex, get down here!”

And then the backs of Tom’s legs hit the side of the sofa. He sat on the arm, pulled Hal down with him and Hal came easily. He bent forward to kiss Tom again.

“Your trousers,” Hal said, and Tom shifted, helped Hal to get them pushed down around his thighs. He kicked off his trainers and then shifted and turned, sliding off the arm of the sofa and down onto the cushions. 

He reached for Hal. “Come on,” he said. “Come on, Hal.”

Hal came around the side of the sofa and then fell to his knees in front of Tom. It was pretty clear the direction that Hal intended this to go now, and when Hal started pulling at Tom’s trousers again, Tom was quick to help, pushing them down over his knees so that Hal could pull them off completely and toss them aside. 

“Alex,” Tom called again, just as Hal began pressing kisses high on the inside of Tom’s thigh. 

“Should we wait for her?” Hal asked, his breath a warm puff against Tom’s skin.

“No,” Tom said. “I think we’ve given her plenty of time, haven’t we? I’ve been calling for her for ages.” He didn’t see what she could be doing up there for so long anyway. She didn’t sleep, she didn’t need to use the toilet, none of that. Maybe she was talking to Michaela – maybe they were getting on, chatting about – well, something. Tom didn’t really know.

“We’ll just have to make it up to her later, I reckon,” Tom concluded.

“Mm,” Hal agreed. He pushed Tom’s knees further apart, and was just about to move in when Alex appeared, rentaghosted into the room right behind Hal. Tom jumped and Hal pulled back, surprised.

“Finally, Alex,” Tom sighed.

“Tom, I was just talking with Re – oh.”

Tom knew who it was she was about to say. They didn’t like to talk about any of it in front of Hal and he’d guessed that that was why Alex had gone upstairs when Regus called. Regus was a bit late with the tip though and Tom –

“I think Tom’s likely already dealt with that,” Hal observed, guessing the unspoken details of the conversation right away.

“Erm, yeah,” Tom said. “Yeah, I – that’s been taken care of.”

Alex’s fingers were at her mouth, playing at her lower lip as she watched them. Finally she nodded. Her mouth turned down in an exaggerated frown and then her hand fell away from her face. She moved toward them and crouched down behind Hal, her hands at Hal’s sides. 

“Good,” she said. She tipped her head down to kiss Hal’s shoulder.

Hal craned his neck to kiss her mouth. Alex turned her head away, nodded toward Tom. 

“Please, go back to what you were getting to before I showed up. It looked like it was going to be good. Ignore me,” she said. “Just, I don’t know. Pretend I’m a ghost?”

Hal paused and the side of his mouth pulled up with the hint of a smile.

“Funny, right?” Alex asked.

“Yes,” Hal returned. “Hilarious.”

“Yeah,” Tom groaned. “Hilarious, Alex. Can we –?” He gestured down to himself. He was sitting there half in the nudie, after all, and he was getting a little – the momentum had been lost, the rush of it, and Tom felt a little awkward now just sitting there, a little exposed and embarrassed by his earlier desperation. 

It was better this way though. Alex had managed to disconnect it from what came before, the fight in the woods with that vampire. It was just the three of them now and that was better. It felt more real. But he’d really like it if –

“Hal, do you still want to –“

“Yes,” Hal said, interjected immediately. He looked up at Tom, seemed a little exasperated that Tom would ask him such a thing. “Of course, just give me a – Yes, of course.”

Tom’s suggestion that Hal might not want to continue irritated Hal just enough that he immediately turned his attentions back to Tom. He seemed determined suddenly, probably eager to prove to Tom just how wrong Tom was to question Hal’s desire. That was all right with Tom. He’d be more than happy to let Hal win this round. 

Hal’s hands pushed Tom’s legs apart, his touch firm and direct, and then Hal was there, his fingers wrapping around Tom, and his mouth, and Tom couldn’t help it; he reacted without thinking, pushed up into it.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry.”

Hal made a noise, but he didn’t stop what he was doing. 

“I don’t think that required apology,” Alex mumbled, low so that Tom almost didn’t catch it. She slid a hand up the back of Hal’s neck and into his hair, scratched at his scalp and then held her hand there. It looked like she was pushing Hal down a bit, forcing his mouth further down onto Tom and Tom itched to touch Hal too, but he didn’t want to seem pushy, even though he thought Hal actually kind of liked that, from what Tom had seen so far. Tom curled his fingers against the cushions of the sofa anyway, made sure not to touch.

Hal was good at this. God, not that Tom really had anything to compare to, obviously, but he thought that Hal must be really good. 

Once Alex joked that Hal must have been there when they first invented the blowjob and Hal scoffed and muttered something about how sex hadn’t really changed much at all in five hundred years and probably hadn’t in the thousand before that either. Even so, Hal had been around a while. He’d had time to get it right. It felt – 

Tom grunted and pushed up off the sofa again. Hal’s hands pressed down against his hips, pressed him back against the sofa, but Hal still didn’t pull back. He continued on, all hot mouth, lips and tongue and – 

Alex moaned, right before she sort of toppled over from where she was crouched by Hal. She kept one hand touching Hal, kept that contact as she rested her back against the sofa. Her head fell to rest against Tom’s leg, just above the bend of his knee.

“Sorry,” Tom said again, a reflex.

“Okay, that definitely didn’t require an apology,” Alex confirmed, louder now. “Tom, if you could just –”

Tom pressed his head back against the blanket draped over the sofa and shut his eyes. 

“What?” he asked, though he couldn’t really bring himself to care, not now, not with Hal’s mouth on him, doing the things he was doing. Tom didn’t think he’d ever get used to this. 

Alex released Hal and scrambled up off the floor and onto the sofa beside Tom. She dropped cold kisses onto his parted lips and Tom reached for her, but she caught his hands and moved them down to Hal’s head instead. She guided his fingers over Hal’s cheeks and Hal let out a puff of breath that hit Tom’s stomach and made him gasp. And then she moved Tom’s hands until they rested on Hal’s head, fingers curling around the back, low by his neck.

Tom hesitated, but Hal didn’t. He removed one of his hands from Tom’s hip and wrapped it back around the base of Tom’s dick instead.

Alex kissed Tom’s cheek, then his mouth when he turned his head to look at her. He must have looked a bit confused because she smiled at him, reached up to smooth her thumb across his forehead, her fingertips tracing the lines of his eyebrows, and then she leaned in close and she said, “He likes it, you know. He wants us to be a little rough with him. He thinks about you in that old warehouse, forcing him down onto his knees in front of you, and then – you can probably imagine the rest now, yeah? Tom?”

Alex wasn’t saying it just for Tom. She said it for Hal too, her voice loud enough, and Tom felt it when Hal moaned around him in response to her words, voicing the thoughts she’d pulled from his head. Tom’s hands tightened on Hal, and he felt Hal’s hand loosen its grip on his hip, his palm just resting lightly now, not pushing down at all. 

Tom tested, pressed his feet down on the floor, his back against the sofa, and then pushed up into Hal’s mouth. Hal didn’t try to push him back down. He made a noise that fell somewhere between a grunt and a moan and then his eyes fell shut. Hal’s mouth was hot, inviting, and as Tom watched, Hal’s cheeks hollowed out. Everything tightened around Tom, and then Hal’s tongue was back and – When Tom pushed up into Hal’s mouth this time, it was almost involuntary, a reaction, exactly the sort he’d been trying so hard to resist.

Alex was still curled beside him, not touching now, just watching. Her teeth worked at her bottom lip, and her fingers pressed at her chin. When Tom turned to look at her, she nodded.

“Keep going,” she said, and Tom did as he was told, more earnestly, eagerly, as though he’d been waiting on her permission to continue. He thrust up again and again, Hal’s hand keeping him from going too far, but not stopping him either. Tom wasn’t going to last long like this, not with Hal making those noises, and not with his mouth –

“Alex,” Tom gasped and Alex reached for him just as Tom went over the edge, legs straining, shaking, back arched as he spilled over on Hal’s tongue. He felt Alex shaking beside him, sharing in his reaction, her gasps timed with his, and then finally Tom relaxed, fell back into the sofa, Hal’s hands pressing firm on his hips again, holding him down against the cushions. 

After a moment, Hal released him and sat hard on the floor, his arm knocking into the coffee table. He swallowed and then he laughed. 

“Christ,” he said. He slid across the floor until his back rested against the base of the white sofa. 

Alex turned Tom’s head toward her, kissed him, her cold tongue pressing into his mouth. Her kisses were refreshing and sweet like dessert. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever told her that, how much he loved that about her.

When she released him, she fell back, sprawled on the sofa beside him. She looked over at Hal, took him in, his hair a mess from their fingers, his shirt rucked up and his erection straining in his trousers. 

“Oh, Thomas,” Alex sighed. “What have we done to you?”

“What do you mean?” Tom asked. He hadn’t expected her to start talking about him when it seemed clear that her attention had been turning to Hal.

Hal smiled. His mouth fell open with it and Tom thought that if he wasn’t in the room, Hal might have laughed. Hal was like that now, all normal Hal washing up dishes in the kitchen, then switching back, wanting Tom to use him and smirking about it afterward. It was still a little weird.

“Nothing, really,” Alex said. He thought she might leave it at that, but after a moment, she continued. “Think about it though. The you that you were before any of this, do you think you ever could have imagined you here now?”

“The – what?”

Alex shook her head. “I can’t even – if I had told you then that Hal wanted you to, you know, fuck his mouth like you just did, I think you might have run for the hills. Between the two of us, I reckon we’ve corrupted you pretty completely by now, don’t you?”

“I don’t – well, I don’t know,” Tom started. 

This time Hal did laugh.

Alex smiled over toward Tom, reached over and gripped his shoulder before she pushed herself up off the sofa and crawled down onto the floor with Hal. She leaned over him, kissed his mouth. Hal kissed her back without hesitation. 

“Your turn then?” Alex asked Hal. “What do you think? It’s been a while, yeah? Are you up for it?”

Hal did hesitate then. He sighed, and Tom and Alex both knew what would come next. An excuse, a subject change, or both. 

“Hal, come on,” Alex started. She slid her hand across his stomach, but Hal cut in and interrupted her before she could take things any further.

“What was the vampire’s name?” Hal asked. He didn’t ask it a lot, but he knew where Tom had been. He knew what Tom had been doing, and that Tom had won. 

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “He attacked me before I was done talking.” He usually asked. He liked to know who he was killing.

“Jones,” Alex supplied. “Something Jones, Regus said. Phillip?” 

“Hm,” Hal grunted.

“Did you know him?” Tom asked. “Phillip Jones?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“That’s good,” Tom guessed. It was weird sometimes when it turned out to be someone that Hal knew. Usually Hal didn’t care, but it was still a little weird.

“I need to shower,” Hal said. 

“Hal,” Alex protested. She reached for him, but Hal shrugged her off. He pushed himself up from the floor and stood there for a moment, looking down at them. He was waiting for permission.

Finally Alex sighed and shrugged. “Go on,” she said.

Tom nodded and then watched as Hal walked away from them and disappeared up the stairs. Once he was gone, Tom slid down off the sofa to sit beside Alex on the floor. He was still mostly naked and he pulled his knees up toward his chest. Alex leaned in against his side. 

They were quiet, both thinking the same thing. They were listening to make sure that the bathroom really was Hal’s intended destination.

“The door at the end,” Tom said after a moment.

“He won’t be able to open it,” Alex confirmed. “All doors are shut and locked except his room and the bathroom.” They’d boarded the windows in those rooms, but left the others bare. They had to have sunlight in some of the rooms. 

“You shouldn’t have left him down here alone before,” Tom pointed out. “One of us is supposed to be with him at all times or he’s locked safe in the cellar. That’s the rule.”

“I know,” Alex said. “I didn’t want to talk vampires in front of him. I thought that might be worse. He didn’t suggest it or anything, I just kind of – walked away and hoped he wouldn’t notice? I guess I thought it’d be all right. I was concentrating on the doors and I thought I’d be gone for just a minute or two and then I’d be back. Regus sure knows how to talk though, doesn’t he?”

“He say anything else other than the stuff about that vampire?” 

“No,” Alex said. “Nothing we didn’t already know.” 

Tom nodded. “I found that vampire in the woods, just wandering about. He tried to talk to me about Hal.”

Alex sighed. He thought he knew what she was probably thinking – she was probably thinking again that he ought to start lying, ought to put out a convincing argument that he’d staked Hal once and for all. She didn’t say it, but Tom knew, and Tom was starting to think she might be right. 

“Hal said he was good today,” Tom shrugged. “He said he didn’t even want to leave.”

Alex turned her head to look at him. She was close, her face resting on his shoulder, so when she turned, her nose knocked his jaw.

“He was almost like his old self,” she agreed. “Good Hal or whatever we’re calling him these days.”

“There ain’t two Hal’s though, is there? Not really,” Tom said. At this point it was stating the obvious, but he still needed the reminder.

“No,” Alex agreed, and then he saw her face twist up. She sat up and balled her hands into fists, pressed them down against the floor. “Okay, this has got to stop.”

“What?” 

“No, not this,” Alex clarified. She gestured toward the stairs. “That! I mean, let’s face it. Having your own sex slave in the cellar, that’s pretty great, don’t get me wrong, but –”

“He’s not a sex slave,” Tom countered, immediately defensive. “And it ain’t all about corrupting me like you said before neither.”

“All right,” Alex said. “You know I’m joking about the sex slave thing, Tom, but don’t you miss what we had going before? Now he’s all ‘What was the vampire’s name?’ and ‘I must shower immediately before either of you touch me.’ I think I get it – I mean, obviously it started after he tried to bite me like he did, right? So it’s probably because of that somehow, but he can’t hurt us, not really and I – I miss it, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “I liked what we had going on before. It felt more like – well, sometimes it seemed a bit like when we were all human. Not always, but sometimes. I liked that.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Yeah, sometimes it did. Jesus, Tom, remember the time you thought if you both tried hard enough, you could get a ghost to feel?”

Hal spent forty minutes with his hand up Alex’s skirt, caressing her over her tights and her knickers while Tom pressed her hands to the bed, their fingers entwined. He dropped kisses onto her cold mouth and down her neck. 

Alex had groaned when Hal pushed her skirt up around her waist and tried using his mouth on her instead. She gripped Tom’s hands tight and closed her eyes, but even that was useless. It got Hal and Tom all hot and bothered and Alex liked the idea of it, loved the picture of it, and was happy to let them continue to work at her, but it was clear that their efforts weren’t going to get them any further than that.

“Yeah,” Tom said. He sniffed and then shrugged, pulled at the hairs on his knee. “It didn’t work though, did it? Not really.”

“It worked for me,” Alex insisted.

Eventually Hal had grown frustrated by his failure, even though the whole thing had been Tom’s idea in the first place. Hal claimed to know right from the start that it wouldn’t work, but he got frustrated anyway and ordered Tom off the bed. 

“Let me try,” Tom had offered, but Hal merely grunted, pulled off his shirt and threw it aside. His trousers were next, and then when he was naked, he positioned himself over Alex, pushed at her knees until they framed his body and pressed against his sides.

“Oh,” Alex said, her voice soft, and Tom knew what she was thinking. He’d relived it through her kisses enough to picture it exactly as it had happened for her. Tom’s hand rubbed at the front of his pants.

Hal glanced over toward Tom, frowned and then shook his head.

“Jesus, Tom,” Hal said, impatient. “Get your fucking clothes off and get over here.”

Tom had paused. Hal wasn’t supposed to be bossing them around. That was a red flag, one of their first rules. Hal wasn’t in charge. Hal wasn’t ever gonna be in charge, not of this house. Tom glanced toward Alex, sprawled beneath Hal on the bed. 

Her eyebrows rose, but then she looked up at Hal, naked over her, and when she turned back toward Tom it was to shrug and gesture for Tom to join them on the bed. 

Tom scrambled out of his clothes. 

“You ain’t the one in charge here,” Tom said, leaned over Hal once he was up on the bed with them. 

Hal seemed to deflate a little at that, relax beneath Tom just a fraction.

“I know,” he said. “I was merely – I want this to be good for Alex.”

“I don’t really think you need to worry about that,” Alex said, already reaching for the little bottle of lubricant from the drawer of the table by Hal’s bed. “I can already tell this will be good for me.”

They’d done this before, of course, him and Hal. The first time was that night that Hal tried to break out of the cellar. It was rough, what with the fight and the haste of it all, but Hal groaned and bent into it, instructed Tom, faster, harder, until Tom held tight to Hal’s hips, his body pounding hard against Hal’s until he thought he might explode with it. And then he did. He shook and shuddered and collapsed against Hal. Hal’s knees buckled and they both folded down to the floor, Hal curled in on himself, his hand working his dick frantically until he shuddered too and came against the floor.

It wasn’t exactly how Tom imagined that it would go. It was pretty much exactly what he’d been avoiding all those weeks in the warehouse. But they weren’t in the warehouse anymore, they were at the house, and Hal had chosen them and – well, it was all right that way too. 

This time with Alex they were together in the cellar, and except for Hal’s orders, it was more like what Tom had imagined. The three of them together, proper together, with the bed and all, and when Tom pushed into Hal, he was slow about it, careful. 

Hal seemed a little desperate beneath him, but he kept his mouth shut, didn’t try to take control again. He moaned a bit when Tom slid all the way in, and his moan was echoed by Alex. Alex had her hands on Hal, her eyes closed, and her mouth just a bit open. When Tom pulled most of the way out of Hal and then pushed back in, Hal gasped and Alex too. 

Tom couldn’t see Hal’s face, but he could see Alex well enough, and he could tell that she liked it. And if she liked it, then Hal must too, and knowing that, knowing that he was causing each gasp and each moan, quickened Tom’s pace and urged him on. Alex’s legs were tight against Hal’s sides, holding on, her body creating just enough friction against Hal to get him jerking beneath Tom.

Tom thrust harder so that Hal shook with it, so that Hal rocked forward against Alex with each push. Alex’s hands clutched at Hal, fingers pulling at his hair. She guided him down into a kiss and Tom kept going, listened close for each simultaneous grunt, every shared noise of pleasure.

When Tom thought about it later, it felt like a perfect moment that went on forever, but in truth, he knew it was probably only a few minutes before it was over, before Hal fell over the edge and took Alex with him, and then Tom followed right behind. 

“Your pal Mary really was onto something here, wasn’t she?” Alex gasped afterward, and she repeated it now beside Tom on the floor of the living room. 

“That Mary,” Alex said, a bit wistful. “I thought she was a total nutter, but she knew what she was doing.”

Tom smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess she must’ve.”

Alex slapped the floor again and then reached out to grip Tom’s knee. “Well, that settles it then. You’re just going to have to get more sexually aggressive with him, Thomas.”

“Wait, what?”

“That’s right, you heard me.”

“I don’t think I even really know what we’re talking about anymore,” Tom admitted. 

“Push him up against walls!” Alex said. “Get your hands on him before he starts in on you. You really think he’ll say no if we start pushing it more? It’s what he’s here for, isn’t it? You should have seen the porn in his head while he had his mouth wrapped around you earlier. We push him a little more, there’s no way he’ll keep resisting.”

“I don’t know,” Tom said, doubtful. He wasn’t really – the only time he pushed Hal up against anything was when they were fighting and yeah, sometimes that turned into more than fighting, and they both enjoyed it, but he couldn’t just start pushing Hal around when Hal didn’t start or deserve it. 

“Did you hear that?” Alex asked suddenly. 

Tom shrugged. “I didn’t think, when we got Hal to come back here and all, that we’d have to convince him to have sex, really, based on everything that was happening before. And anyway, that’s how we ended up here right now, innit? I started kissing him in the kitchen while you were upstairs.”

“You started kissing him, sure, and then you let him blow you,” Alex said, dismissive. “You let him run the show and then let him back out when things came around to him. Okay, seriously, did you hear that? Shh, listen.” She pressed a finger to her lips.

Tom listened. He didn’t hear anything, just the water running.

“I don’t hear nowt,” he admitted. 

Alex held up a finger, waited a moment more, and then relaxed.

“Nevermind,” Alex sighed. “I thought I heard something thump up there. He probably just dropped the soap.”

They sat together in silence for a while and waited. Whatever it was, they didn’t hear it again.

“Maybe we should check on him,” Tom suggested.

“Maybe,” Alex agreed. “Make sure he’s not up there pulling boards off the windows or planning an ambush or something. The running water might just be for distraction.”

“Yeah,” Tom said. Tom didn’t really think Hal was actually planning anything upstairs, but it was probably a good idea to check just the same. “I don’t really think he’s trying to run away though, do you?”

“No,” Alex said. “Come on.”

She leaned over to kiss Tom and then she pulled Tom with her until they were both on their feet. Tom turned and found his trousers. He grabbed them, found that his underwear were still inside, and slid both back on before he followed Alex up the stairs. 

“Stay here,” Alex said once they were standing outside the bathroom door, and then she was gone only to reappear beside him in the corridor a moment later.

“Well,” she said. “He’s definitely in the shower.”

Tom nodded. “Good.”

Tom heard the water shut off. Alex frowned, leaned against the wall, chewed at the edge of her finger.

“What are we doing?” Tom asked. 

“He’ll be out in a moment,” Alex said. “Just wait.”

Hal opened the bathroom door to find Alex and Tom standing there, waiting for him. He wasn’t surprised. 

“Tom,” Hal said. “Alex. You know it’s polite to knock before entering a bathroom while someone is bathing.”

Alex shrugged and Hal shook his head before he continued.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to go to the cellar to change.”

Hal’s wardrobe was still up here in his old bedroom, though they kept most of his clothes in the cellar. He didn’t have much to choose from up here and was wearing a pair of running shorts and a white t-shirt that Tom actually thought might be one of his from the café.

“Is that my shirt?” Tom asked at the same time that Alex said, “You aren’t going anywhere until we get some answers, buddy.”

“What?” Hal asked. He looked dead confused and Tom turned to Alex, eyebrows raised.

“I took a shower,” Hal explained. “I wasn’t –“

“No,” Alex said. “We know you were just taking a shower. That’s not what we want to discuss.”

“What then?”

Alex nodded toward Tom. “Go on,” she said.

“What?”

“Push him up against the wall,” Alex hissed.

“Why?”

“Just do it,” Alex prodded. “Like we said.”

“We didn’t really say though, did we? We didn’t really talk about this.”

Hal looked from Tom to Alex. Hal’s brow was furrowed, and when Tom caught his eye, Hal shrugged. Tom took that as permission and he reached for Hal and pushed him back. Hal hit the wall beside the bathroom door with a grunt.

“Now what?” Tom asked, looking to Alex for guidance.

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Whatever you want. You two are the experts when it comes to turning fights into – Kiss him or stick your hand down his pants. You’re in charge here. That’s kind of the point.”

“Erm,” Tom said. He leaned in toward Hal.

“Oh,” Hal said when Tom got close. He kissed Tom back right away, light and casual. It amazed Tom a little that they could do that, just kiss each other like it was nothing now, like it was normal. It didn’t seem so long ago that a hand shake was –

Hal’s intake of breath was sharp. He jumped, pulled away from Tom’s mouth, and then laughed. 

“Alex, your hand is freezing.”

“Do you want me to stop?” Alex asked. Tom looked down to find that Alex had slipped her hand into Hal’s shorts. She must have done something good then, because Hal jerked again and shook his head. 

“No, it’s – you can – What’s got into the two of you? Has something happened?”

“Nope,” Alex said. She shook her head. “Nothing happened. That’s sorta the thing though, isn’t it? Stuff used to happen between us, but nope, not anymore. Now stuff happens to us and then you run off and hide.”

“Run off,” Hal repeated. “I can hardly run off – I’m –“

“I don’t want a sex slave,” Tom said then, blurted really, interrupting Hal. “That ain’t what this is about.”

Hal frowned. “A sex – who said – Alex.”

“I was kidding,” Alex mumbled, her hand still working in Hal’s shorts.

“It’s supposed to be all three of us together,” Tom continued. “It ain’t about corrupting me or whatever. You can’t keep, you know – unless that’s what you really want, but it wasn’t like that before, so I don’t think I see why that’s how it’s gotta be now. I liked how it was.”

Hal looked like he was really trying to concentrate on what Tom was saying, but his mouth was working and then he shook a little and reached out, a hand on Tom’s shoulder to steady himself.

“I don’t think I got more than a word of that,” Hal admitted. He held Tom close, his breath coming out in heavy gasps.

“Maybe we hold off on the talking until we’re finished with this, yeah?” Alex suggested.

Hal swallowed and nodded his assent, but Alex wasn’t quite done with talking, despite it being her suggestion. She turned to Tom and continued.

“Cover his eyes,” she instructed.

“Okay,” Tom nodded and then he paused. “Why?”

“Because I want to try something,” Alex said. “Come on.”

Tom shrugged. Hal was watching him, but when Tom reached up, Hal’s eyes fell shut just before Tom placed his palm over them. Hal leaned forward and Tom met him in a kiss. It was awkward and a little weird with his hand across the top half of Hal’s face, but Hal didn’t seem to mind. 

The kiss wasn’t casual now, not like it was a moment before. Now it was teeth and tongues and Hal’s breath coming fast and hot, and Tom swallowed each gasp, each small noise, until Alex intervened again, caught Tom’s attention with a hand on his shoulder.

Tom left Hal’s mouth, but kept his hand firm over Hal’s eyes. Alex tilted her head down and pushed her eyebrows up on her forehead, directing Tom to follow her glance. She reached for Tom’s free hand and then began to move it down toward the front of Hal’s shorts. 

He wasn’t really sure he understood her, but when she started to slide her hand away from Hal, and then mouthed something that looked like ‘touch him’, Tom caught on pretty quick.

He slid his hand into Hal’s shorts just as Alex removed hers. 

Hal was left untouched for only a second or two before Alex’s hand was replaced by Tom’s, and after Alex, Tom’s touch must have felt quite a bit warmer than usual, because Hal cried out, thrust forward hard into the ring of Tom’s hand, and then spilled all over the inside of his shorts. Hal’s legs shook and Tom quickly removed his hand from Hal’s eyes to press it firm against Hal’s chest instead, holding him there against the wall.

Alex laughed and she sounded surprised, maybe even a little relieved. She pulled Tom in toward her, kissed him hard on the mouth, and then turned and did the same to Hal before she leaned back against the wall and slid down it to settle on the floor of the corridor. It wasn’t long before Hal followed her lead, his legs buckling beneath him. Tom’s hand slipped out of Hal’s shorts and he watched as Hal folded down onto the ground.

“Well, that went exactly as I hoped it would,” Alex sighed. Hal turned his head to look at her, but he still seemed a little dazed, wasn’t doing much more than just sitting there, the rise and fall of his chest visible even from where Tom was standing.

Finally Tom wiped his hand on his trousers and then sat down on the floor with Hal and Alex.

“All right,” Alex said. “So let’s talk.”

Hal didn’t say anything, but he did swallow and nod.

“You don’t have to keep doing this,” Alex started. “You don’t have to hold back with us.”

Hal laughed. “Of course, I do.”

“But why?” Alex asked. “I don’t think you’re really fooling any of us here. The way we've been - I've seen bits of what's in your head, Hal. It's a mess, I get that. And this pulling away thing all started because you tried to bite me, didn’t it? You’re trying to punish yourself for it or something equally Hal-like. We’re right, aren’t we?” 

Hal swallowed again and then eventually he found his voice and he spoke.

“I’m trying to maintain control – I’m trying to – I can’t be exactly that person again,” Hal admitted. “I can’t go back to exactly how it was if I continue to do this with the two of you –” 

He trailed off, huffed a little and then sighed.

“What does that mean?” Alex pressed.

“I don’t know how to keep that same level of control if I keep engaging in this with you. It means that if that’s what you really want, if that’s what Tom wants, then perhaps we give up on it all now.”

Tom stiffened, frowned.

“What?” Tom asked. “And let you walk out of here?”

Hal shrugged and Alex laughed, a small short cough of a laugh.

“That ain’t happening,” Tom said. He shook his head. “No way.”

Hal opened his mouth and the corner of it tried to pull up into a smile. Eventually he nodded.

“The man that you’re holding on to no longer exists,” Hal said, slow, so that his words were clear, so that he could be sure that Alex and Tom heard and understood.

“So what?” Alex asked. “The person I was no longer exists either. And look at Tom – it’s like I was saying earlier. Can you imagine that Tom here now? Protecting us from monsters by day, shagging you into the mattress by night? That Tom’s gone. And when you think about it that way, change isn’t such a bad thing, right? We’ve all changed. Everybody changes. Sometimes we change and we’re worse, but sometimes we change for the better too.”

Hal seemed confused by this.

“Listen, you’re kind of a dick,” Alex pointed out. “That isn’t news to us. You were kind of a dick before too, you just hid it a little better and nobody ended up dead because of it. Well, nobody except me.”

“Alex,” Tom said, worried suddenly about where she intended to take this. 

“My point is, we’ve seen what you’re capable of. We’ve both seen it. There’s no point trying to hide it from us now. You aren’t going to get rid of us that easily.”

Hal shook his head. “If we continue this way, it will almost surely be more than two years before I’m able to control myself sufficiently to – to function unconfined. It’s likely that, at some point, I’ll lash out at you again.” 

Alex frowned and then she shrugged. “I’m dead and Tom can take you. And if we have to leave the boards up longer than two years, we’ll leave the boards up longer than two years. We’ll leave them up four years, or hell, you know what? We’ll leave them up forever. It’s not like we had any other plans. This was pretty much it.”

“Really?” Tom asked. 

Alex still talked sometimes about how she should leave, how any sensible person would turn their back on Hal and walk away, how when she was human, she would have thought she’d make better choices than these. She agreed with Tom when Tom was set on getting Hal back, she agreed to stay and to help. She said she’d wanted it then, but Tom was never sure, even when Alex stopped talking about her unfinished business and started adding furniture to her bedroom. He was never really sure if she was just doing it for him. He always hoped that she wanted this a bit for her too.

“I was upset,” Alex said. “Of course, I was upset. A vampire ripped out my throat, remember? But I’m here because I want this. I don’t know, I guess – I love you, both of you. And anyway, what else is there for us out there? We’ve all been out there. I want what we have in here, and if we have to work at it, if it takes a couple years before we can settle into it without – without biting incidents and you two beating the shite out of each other once in a while, then it takes a couple years, right? We’ve got time.”

“Alex, you and Tom –“ Hal started.

“This is it for me too,” Tom interrupted, cut in, perhaps a bit too quickly.

Alex had never said she loved them before. Tom felt his heart swell at her words, felt himself relax, and knew then that the conversation wasn’t as dangerous to them as it had initially felt. Alex loved them and Alex was staying. Tom loved them and he wasn’t going to lose them. Hal, well –

“You don’t really want to leave, do you, Hal?” Tom guessed, took a chance and put it out there. “You talk about giving up and that, but you still want this too, right? If it’s a choice between staying here with us and whatever’s out there –”

“No,” Hal said almost immediately. “I mean, yes, I’d still choose this. I want this.”

Tom sighed and leaned back, his head knocking against the wall. He turned to smile at Hal and Alex. He guessed he probably looked a bit sappy, a bit love struck and dim, but he didn’t care. 

“I was getting a bit worried for a minute there, wasn’t I?” he said.

Tom shifted and felt something poke into his thigh. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the fang he’d taken from the vampire in the forest.

“What’s that?” Alex asked.

Tom turned it over in his hand.

Tom shrugged. “Erm, I was thinking about what you suggested to me before a few times, and maybe you’re right. Maybe it would be better if we started saying Hal was dead. I was thinking maybe this could be the proof. If that’s okay with you, Hal.” 

Hal’s eyebrows rose and he reached out. Tom let Hal pluck the tooth from his hand. 

Tom didn’t really think they needed Hal’s permission for this. Hal didn’t really have any choice since it wasn’t like they were going to let him just walk out of here anytime soon. He might as well be dead as far as the rest of the vampires were concerned, but since they were all sitting here and they’d been talking about everything else, it didn’t hurt to try to be polite about it.

“You can’t use this one,” Hal said, catching on immediately.

Tom started. “Why not?”

“Look at the way it’s curved,” Hal pointed out. He leaned in toward Tom and held the tooth up for Tom to see. “My teeth don’t curve like that, they’re shorter and wide here.” 

He pulled his lip up off his teeth to demonstrate. His fangs weren’t down, but Tom sort of saw what he was saying anyway. Hal continued. 

“This would fool some of them, but not the ones who knew me well. You’ll have to choose another from that box you keep.”

Tom took the tooth back from Hal. 

“Maybe you can go through them with me later,” Tom suggested. “Help me choose the right one.”

“You want Hal to help you to properly kill Hal?” Alex asked with a smile.

Tom shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

Alex raised her eyebrows and then nudged Hal.

“Well?” she asked. “Are you going to help us kill Hal Yorke or what?”

Now it was Hal’s turn to shrug. His mouth turned down into a frown for just a moment before he spoke.

“Yes, of course I’ll help.”

“Brilliant. Cheers, mate,” Tom said. He shoved the tooth back into his pocket. 

Tom stood and reached out his hands, one for Hal and one for Alex. Hal and Alex turned to look at each other and Tom waited, arms outstretched. Finally Alex smiled and Hal nodded, and they accepted Tom’s hands. Tom held them tight and pulled them both to their feet.


End file.
